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ABRAHAM LINCOLN 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

A TRIBUTE 



BY 

GEORGE BANCROFT 




NEW YORK 

A. WESSELS COMPANY 

MCMVIII 



Copyright, 1908, 

A. Wessels Company 

New York 

September, 1908 



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ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

A TRIBUTE 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN 



THAT God rules in the affairs of men 
is as certain as any truth of phys- 
ical science. On the great moving 
Power which is from the beginning hangs 
the world of the senses and the world 
of thought and action. Eternal wisdom 
marshals the great procession of the 
nations, working in patient continuity 
through the ages, never halting and never 
abrupt, encompassing all events in its over- 
sight, and ever effecting its will, though 
mortals may slumber in apathy or oppose 
with madness. Kings are lifted up or 
thrown down, nations come and go, repub- 
lics flourish and wither, dynasties pass 
away like a tale that is told; but nothing 
is by chance, though men, in their igno- 
3 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
ranee of eauses, may think so. The deeds 
of time are governed, as well as judged, 
by the decrees of eternity. The caprice of 
fleeting existences bends to the immovable 
Omnipotence, which plants its foot on all 
the centuries and has neither change of 
purpose nor repose. Sometimes, like a 
messenger through the thick darkness of 
night, it steps along mysterious ways ; but 
when the hour strikes for a people, or for 
mankind, to pass into a new form of being, 
unseen hands draw the bolts from the 
gates of futurity; an all-subduing influ- 
ence prepares the minds of men for the 
coming revolution; those who plan resist- 
ance find themselves in conflict with the 
will of Providence rather than with human 
devices ; and all hearts and all understand- 
ings, most of all the opinions and influ- 
ences of the unwilling, are wonderfully 
attracted and compelled to bear forward 
4 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
the change, which becomes more an obe- 
dience to the law of universal nature than 
submission to the arbitrament of man. 

In the fullness of time a Republic rose 
up in the wilderness of America. Thou- 
sands of years had passed away before this 
child of the ages could be born. From 
whatever there was of good in the systems 
of former centuries she drew her nourish- 
ment; the wrecks of the past were her 
warnings. With the deepest sentiment of 
faith fixed in her inmost nature, she dis- 
enthralled religion from bondage to tem- 
poral power, that her worship might be 
worship only in spirit and in truth. The 
wisdom which had passed from India 
through Greece, with what Greece had 
added of her own; the jurisprudence of 
Rome; the mediseval municipalities; the 
Teutonic method of representation; the 
political experience of England; the be- 
5 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

nignant wisdom of the expositors of the 
law of nature and of nations in France 
and Holland, all shed on her their select- 
est influence. She washed the gold of 
political wisdom from the sands wherever 
it was found; she cleft it from the rocks; 
she gleaned it among ruins. Out of all 
the discoveries of statesmen and sages, out 
of all the experience of past human life, 
she compiled a perennial political philoso- 
phy, the primordial principles of national 
ethics. The wise men of Europe sought 
the best government in a mixture of mon- 
archy, aristocracy, and democracy; Amer- 
ica went behind these names to extract 
from them the vital elements of social 
forms, and blend them harmoniously in 
the free commonwealth, which comes 
nearest to the illustration of the natural 
equality of all men. She intrusted the 
guardianship of established rights to law, 
6 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
the movements of reform to the spirit of 
the people, and drew her force from the 
happy reconciliation of both. 

Republics had heretofore been limited 
to small cantons, or cities and their de- 
pendencies ; America, doing that of which 
the like had not before been known upon 
the earth, or believed by kings and states- 
men to be possible, extended her Republic 
across a continent. Under her auspices 
the vine of liberty took deep root and filled 
the land; the hills were covered with its 
shadow; its boughs were like the goodly 
cedars, and reached unto both oceans. 
The fame of this only daughter of free- 
dom went out into all the lands of the 
earth; from her the human race drew 
hope. 

Neither hereditary monarchy nor hered- 
itary aristocracy planted itself on our 
soil; the only hereditary condition that 

7 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
fastened itself upon us was servitude. 
Nature works in sincerity, and is ever 
true to its law. The bee hives honey; 
the viper distills poison ; the vine stores 
its juices, and so do the poppy and 
the upas. In like manner, every thought 
and every action ripens its seed, each 
according to its kind. In the indivi- 
dual man, and still more in a nation, a 
just idea gives life, and progress, and 
glory; a false conception portends disas- 
ter, shame, and death. A hundred and 
twenty years ago a West Jersey Quaker 
wrote: "This trade of importing slaves is 
dark gloominess hanging over the land; 
the consequences will be grievous to pos- 
terity." At the North the growth of 
slavery was arrested by natural causes ; in 
the region nearest the Tropics it throve 
rankly, and worked itself into the organ- 
ism of the rising States. Virginia stood 
8 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
between the two, with soil and climate and 
resources demanding free labor, yet capa- 
ble of the profitable employment of the 
slave. She was the land of great states- 
men, and they saw the danger of her being 
whelmed under the rising flood in time to 
struggle against the delusions of avarice 
and pride. Ninety-four years ago the 
legislature of Virginia addressed the Brit- 
ish King, saying that the trade in slaves 
was "of great inhumanity," was opposed 
to the "security and happiness" of their 
constituents, "would in time have the 
most destructive influence," and "endan- 
ger their very existence." And the King 
answered them that, "upon pain of his 
highest displeasure, the importation of 
slaves should not be in any respect ob- 
structed." "Pharisaical Britain," wrote 
Franklin in behalf of Virginia, "to pride 
thyself in setting free a single slave that 
9 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

happened to land on thy coasts, while thy 
laws continue a traffic whereby so many 
hundreds of thousands are dragged into 
a slavery that is entailed on their pos- 
terity." "A serious view of this sub- 
ject," said Patrick Henry in 1773, "gives 
a gloomy prospect to future times." In 
the same year George Mason wrote to 
the legislature of Virginia: "The laws 
of impartial Providence may avenge 
our injustice upon our posterity." Con- 
forming his conduct to his convictions, 
Jefferson, in Virginia, and in the Con- 
tinental Congress, with the approval of 
Edmund Pendleton, branded the slave 
trade as piracy; and he fixed in the 
Declaration of Independence, as the 
corner stone of America: "All men are 
created equal, with an unalienable right to 
liberty." On the first organization of 
temporary governments for the conti- 
10 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
nental domain, Jefferson, but for the de- 
fault of New Jersey, would, in 1784, have 
consecrated every part of that territory to 
freedom. In the formation of the na- 
tional Constitution Virginia, opposed by 
a part of New England, vainly struggled 
to abolish the slave trade at once and for- 
ever; and when the ordinance of 1787 was 
introduced by Nathan Dane without the 
clause prohibiting slavery, it was through 
the favorable disposition of Virginia and 
the South that the clause of Jefferson was 
restored, and the whole Northwestern ter- 
ritory—all the territory that then be- 
longed to the Nation— was reserved for 
the labor of freemen. 

The hope prevailed in Virginia that the 
abolition of the slave trade would bring 
with it the gradual abolition of slavery; 
but the expectation was doomed to dis- 
appointment. In supporting incipient 
11 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
measures for emancipation, Jefferson en- 
countered difficulties greater than he could 
overcome; and after vain wrestlings, the 
words that broke from him, "I tremble for 
my country when I reflect that God is 
just, that His justice can not sleep for- 
ever," were words of despair. It was the 
desire of Washington's heart that Vir- 
ginia should remove slavery by a public 
act; and as the prospects of a general 
emancipation grew more and more dim, 
he, in utter hopelessness of the action of 
the State, did all that he could by be- 
queathing freedom to his own slaves. 
Good and true men had, from the days of 
1776, suggested the colonizing of the 
negro in the home of his ancestors; but 
the idea of colonization was thought to 
increase the difficulty of emancipation, 
and, in spite of strong support, while it 
accomplished much good for Africa, it 
12 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
proved impracticable as a remedy at 
home. Madison, who in early life disliked 
slavery so much that he wished "to depend 
as little as possible on the labor of slaves ;" 
Madison, who held that where slavery ex- 
ists "the republican theory becomes falla- 
cious;" Madison, who in the last years of 
his life would not consent to the annexa- 
tion of Texas, lest his countrymen should 
fill it with slaves; Madison, who said: 
"Slavery is the greatest evil under which 
the Nation labors — a portentous evil — an 
evil moral, political, and economical— a 
sad blot on our free country"— went 
mournfully into old age with the cheerless 
words: "No satisfactory plan has yet been 
devised for taking out the stain." 

The men of the Revolution passed 
away. A new generation sprang up, im- 
patient that an institution to which they 
clung should be condemned as inhuman, 
13 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
unwise, and unj^ist. In the throes of 
discontent at the self-reproach of their 
fathers, and blinded by the luster of 
wealth to be acquired by the culture of a 
new staple, they devised the theory that 
slavery, which they would not abolish, was 
not evil, but good. They turned on the 
friends of colonization, and confidently 
demanded: "Why take black men from a 
civilized and Christian country, where 
their labor is a source of immense gain, 
and a power to control the markets of the 
world, and send them to a land of ignor- 
ance, idolatry, and indolence, which was 
the home of their forefathers, but not 
theirs? Slavery is a blessing. Were they 
not in their ancestral land naked, scarcely 
lifted above brutes, ignorant of the course 
of the sun, controlled by nature? And in 
their new abode have they not been taught 
to know the difference of the seasons, to 
14 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

plow and plant and reap, to drive oxen, 
to tame the horse, to exchange their scanty 
dialect for the richest of all the languages 
among men, and the stupid adoration of 
follies for the purest religion? And since 
slavery is good for the blacks, it is good 
for their masters, bringing opulence and 
the opportunity of educating a race. The 
slavery of the black is good in itself; he 
shall serve the white man forever." And 
nature, v/hich better understood the 
quality of fleeting interest and passion, 
laughed as it caught the echo, "man" and 
"forever!" 

A regular development of pretensions 
followed the new declaration with logical 
consistency. Under the old declaration 
every one of the States had retained, each 
for itself, the right of manumitting all 
slaves by an ordinary act of legislation; 
now the power of the people over servitude 
15 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
through their legislatures was curtailed, 
and the privileged class was swift in im- 
posing legal and constitutional obstruc- 
tions on the people themselves. The power 
of emancipation was narrowed or taken 
away. The slave might not be disquieted 
by education. There remained an uncon- 
fessed consciousness that the system of 
bondage was wrong, and a restless mem- 
ory that it was at variance with the true 
American tradition; its safety was there- 
fore to be secured by political organ- 
ization. The generation that made the 
Constitution took care for the predomi- 
nance of freedom in Congress by the ordi- 
nance of Jefferson ; the new school aspired 
to secure for slavery an equality of votes in 
the Senate, and, while it hinted at an or- 
ganic act that should concede to the col- 
lective South a veto power on national 
legislation, it assumed that each State 
16 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

separately had the right to revise and 
nullify laws of the United States, accord- 
ing to the discretion of its judgment. 

The new theory hung as a bias on the 
foreign relations of the country; there 
could be no recognition of Haiti, nor even 
of the American colony of Liberia; and 
the world was given to understand that 
the establishment of free labor in Cuba 
would be a reason for wresting that 
island from Spain. Territories were an- 
nexed—Louisiana, Florida, Texas, half 
of Mexico; slavery must have its share in 
them all, and it accepted for a time a 
dividing line between the unquestioned 
domain of free labor and that in which 
involuntary labor was to be tolerated. 
A few years passed away, and the new 
school, strong and arrogant, demanded 
and received an apology for applying the 
Jefferson proviso to Oregon. 
17 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

The application of that proviso was in- 
terrupted for three Administrations, but 
justice moved steadily onward. In the 
news that the men of California had 
chosen freedom, Calhoun heard the knell 
of parting slavery, and on his deathbed 
he counseled secession. Washington and 
Jefferson and Madison had died despair- 
ing of the abolition of slavery; Calhoun 
died in despair at the growth of freedom. 
His system rushed irresistibly to its natural 
development. The death struggle for Cali- 
fornia was followed by a short truce; but 
the new school of politicians, who said that 
slavery was not evil, but good, soon sought 
to recover the ground they had lost, and, 
confident of securing Kansas, they de- 
manded that the established line in the 
Territories between freedom and slavery 
should be blotted out. The country, 
believing in the strength and enterprise 
18 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
and expansive energy of freedom, made 
answer, though reluctantly: "Be it so; 
let there be no strife between breth- 
ren; let freedom and slavery compete 
for the Territories on equal terms, in a fair 
field, under an impartial administration;" 
and on this theory, if on any, the contest 
might have been left to the decision of 
time. 

The South started back in appallment 
from its victory, for it knew that a fair 
competition foreboded its defeat. But 
where could it now find an ally to save it 
from its own mistake? In a great repub- 
lic, as was observed more than two thou- 
sand years ago, any attempt to overturn 
the state owes its strength to aid from 
some branch of the government. The 
Chief Justice of the United States, with- 
out any necessity or occasion, volunteered 
to come to the rescue of the theory of 
19 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
slavery; and from his court there lay no 
appeal but to the bar of humanity and 
history. Against the Constitution, against 
the memory of the Nation, against a 
previous decision, against a series of enact- 
ments, he decided that the slave is prop- 
erty; that slave property is entitled to no 
less protection than any other property; 
that the Constitution upholds it in every 
Territory against any act of a local legis- 
lature, and even against Congress itself; 
or, as the President for that term tersely 
promulgated the saying, "Kansas is as 
much a slave State as South Carolina or 
Georgia ; slavery, by virtue of the Consti- 
tution, exists in every Territory." The 
municipal character of slavery being thus 
taken away, and slave property decreed to 
be "sacred," the authority of the courts 
was invoked to introduce it by the comity 
of law into States where slavery had been 
20 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

abolished, and in one of the courts of the 
United States a judge pronounced the 
African slave trade legitimate, and nu- 
merous and powerful advocates demanded 
its restoration. 

Moreover, the Chief Justice, in his elab- 
orate opinion, announced what had never 
been heard from any magistrate of Greece 
or Rome ; what was unknown to civil law, 
and canon law, and feudal law, and com- 
mon law, and constitutional law ; unknown 
to Jay, to Rutledge, Ellsworth, and Mar- 
shall—that there are "slave races." The 
spirit of evil is intensely logical. Having 
the authority of this decision, five States 
swiftly followed the earlier example of a 
sixth, and opened the way for reducing the 
free negro to bondage ; the migrating free 
negro became a slave if he but entered 
within the jurisdiction of a seventh; and 
an eighth, from its extent and soil and 

21 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
mineral resources destined to incalculable 
greatness, closed its eyes on its coming 
prosperity, and enacted, as by Taney's 
dictum it had the right to do, that every 
free black man who would live within its 
limits must accept the condition of slavery 
for himself and his posterity. 

Only one step more remained to be 
taken. Jefferson and the leading states- 
men of his day held fast to the idea 
that the enslavement of the African was 
socially, morally, and politically wrong. 
The new school was founded exactly upon 
the opposite idea ; and they resolved, first, 
to distract the Democratic party, for 
which the Supreme Court had now fur- 
nished the means, and then to establish a 
new government, with negro slavery for 
its corner stone, as socially, morally, and 
politically right. 

As the Presidential election drew on, 
22 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

one of the great traditional parties did not 
make its appearance; the other reeled as 
it sought to preserve its old position, and 
the candidate who most nearly repre- 
sented its best opinion, driven by patriotic 
zeal, roamed the country from end to end 
to speak for union, eager, at least, to con- 
front its enemies, yet not having hope that 
it would find its deliverance through 
him. The storm rose to a whirlwind ; who 
should allay its wrath? The most expe- 
rienced statesman of the country had 
failed; there was no hope from those who 
were great after the flesh: could relief 
come from one whose wisdom was like the 
wisdom of little children? 

The choice of America fell on a man 
born west of the Alleghanies, in the cabin 
of poor people of Hardin County, Ken- 
tucky — Abraham Lincoln. 

His mother could read but not write; 
23 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

his father could do neither ; but his parents 
sent him, with an old spelling book, to 
school, and he learned in his childhood to 
do both. 

When eight years old he floated down 
the Ohio with his father on a raft, which 
bore the family and all their .possessions 
to the shore of Indiana; and, child as he 
was, he gave help as they toiled through 
dense forests to the interior of Spencer 
County. There, in the land of free labor, 
he grew up in a log cabin, with the solemn 
solitude for his teacher in his meditative 
hours. Of Asiatic literature he knew 
only the Bible; of Greek, Latin, and 
mediaeval, no more than the translation of 
^sop's Fables; of English, John Bun- 
yan's Pilgrim's Progress. The traditions of 
George Fox and William Penn passed to 
him dimly along the lines of two centuries 
through his ancestors, who were Quakeus. 
24 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

Otherwise his education was altogether 
American. The Declaration of Indepen- 
dence was his compendium of political 
wisdom, the Life of Washington his con- 
stant study, and something of Jefferson 
and Madison reached him through Henry 
Clay, whom he honored from boyhood. 
For the rest, from day to day, he lived the 
life of the American people, walked in its 
light, reasoned with its reason, thought 
with its power of thought, felt the beat- 
ings of its mighty heart, and so was in 
every way a child of nature, a child of the 
West, a child of America. 

At nineteen, feeling impulses of ambi- 
tion to get on in the world, he engaged 
himself to go down the Mississippi in a 
flatboat, receiving ten dollars a month for 
his wages, and afterwards he made the 
trip once more. At twenty-one he drove 
his father's cattle, as the family migrated 
25 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

to Illinois, and split rails to fence in the new 
homestead in the wild. At twenty-three 
he was a captain of volunteers in the Black 
Hawk war. He kept a store; he learned 
something of surveying; but of English 
literature he added to Bunyan nothing 
but Shakespeare's plays. At twenty-five 
he was elected to the legislature of Illi- 
nois, where he served eight years. At 
twenty-seven he was admitted to the bar. 
In 1837 he chose his home at Springfield, 
the beautiful center of the richest land in 
the State. In 1847 he was a member of 
the national Congress, where he voted 
about forty times in favor of the principle 
of the Jefferson proviso. In 1849 he 
sought, eagerly but unsuccessfully, the 
place of Commissioner of the Land Office, 
and he refused an appointment that would 
have transferred his residence to Oregon. 
In 1854 he gave his influence to elect from 
26 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
Illinois to the American Senate a Demo- 
crat who would certainly do justice to 
Kansas. In 1858, as the rival of Douglas, 
he went before the people of the mighty 
Prairie State, saying: "This Union can 
not permanently endure half slave and 
half free ; the Union will not be dissolved, 
but the house will cease to be divided;" 
and now, in 1861, with no experience 
whatever as an executive officer, while 
States were madly flying from their orbit, 
and wise men knew not where to find 
counsel, this descendant of Quakers, this 
pupil of Bunyan, this offspring of the 
great West, was elected President of 
America. 

He measured the difficulty of the duty 
that devolved upon him, and was resolved 
to fulfill it. As on the eleventh of Feb- 
ruary, 1861, he left Springfield, which for 
a quarter of a century had been his happy 

27 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

home, to the crowd of his friends and 
neighbors, whom he was never more to 
meet, he spoke a solemn farewell: "I 
know not how soon I shall see you again. 
A duty has devolved upon me, greater 
than that which has devolved upon any 
other man since Washington. He never 
would have succeeded except for the aid 
of Divine Providence, upon which he at 
all times relied. On the same Almighty 
Being I place my reliance. Pray that I 
may receive that Divine assistance, with- 
out which I can not succeed, but with 
which success is certain." To the men of 
Indiana he said: "I am but an accidental, 
temporary instrument; it is your business 
to rise up and preserve the Union and 
liberty." At the capital of Ohio he said: 
"Without a name, without a reason why I 
should have a name, there has fallen upon 
me a task such as did not rest even upon 
28 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
the Father of his Country." At various 
places in New York, especially at Al- 
bany, before the legislature, which ten- 
dered him the united support of the great 
Empire State, he said: "While I hold my- 
self the humblest of all the individuals 
who have ever been elevated to the Presi- 
dency, I have a more difficult task to per- 
form than any of them. I bring a true 
heart to the work. I must rely upon the 
people of the whole country for support; 
and with their sustaining aid, even I, 
humble as I am, can not fail to carry the 
ship of state safely through the storm." 
To the assembly of New Jersey, at Tren- 
ton, he explained: *'I shall take the ground 
I deem most just to the North, the East, 
the West, the South, and the whole coun- 
try, in good temper, certainly with no 
malice to any section. I am devoted to 
peace, but it may be necessary to put the 
29 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
foot down firmly." In the old Indepen- 
dence Hall of Philadelphia he said: "I 
have never had a feeling politically that 
did not spring from the sentiments em- 
bodied in the Declaration of Indepen- 
dence, which gave liberty, not alone to 
the people of this country, but to the 
world in all future time. If the country 
can not be saved without giving up that 
principle, I would rather be assassinated 
on the spot than surrender it. I have said 
nothing but what I am willing to live and 
die by." 

Traveling in the dead of night to es- 
cape assassination, Lincoln arrived at 
Washington nine days before his inaugu- 
ration. The outgoing President, at the 
opening of the session of Congress, had 
still kept as the majority of his advisers 
men engaged in treason; had declared 
that in case of even an "imaginary" ap- 
30 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

prehension of danger from notions of 
freedom among the slaves, "disunion 
would become inevitable." Lincoln and 
others had questioned the opinion of 
Taney ; such impugning he ascribed to the 
"factious temper of the times." The 
favorite doctrine of the majority of the 
Democratic party on the power of a Ter- 
ritorial legislature over slavery he con- 
demned as an attack on "the sacred rights 
of property." The State legislatures, he 
insisted, must repeal what he called "their 
unconstitutional and obnoxious enact- 
ments," and which, if such, were "null and 
void," or "it would be impossible for any 
human power to save the Union." Nay, 
if these unimportant acts were not re- 
pealed, "the injured States would be jus- 
tified in revolutionary resistance to the 
Government of the Union." He main- 
tained that no State might secede at its 
31 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

sovereign will and pleasure; that the 
Union was meant for perpetuity, and that 
Congress might attempt to preserve it, but 
only by conciliation; that "the sword was 
not placed in their hands to preserve it by 
force;" that "the last desperate remedy of 
a despairing people" would be "an ex- 
planatory amendment recognizing the 
decision of the Supreme Court of the 
United States." The American Union 
he called "a confederacy" of States, and 
he thought it a duty to make the appeal 
for the amendment "before any of these 
States should separate themselves from 
the Union." The views of the lieutenant- 
general, containing some patriotic advice, 
"conceded the right of secession," pro- 
nounced a quadruple rupture of the 
Union "a smaller evil than the reuniting 
of the fragments by the sword," and "es- 
chewed the idea of invading a seceded 
32 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

State." After changes in the Cabinet, the 
President informed Congress that "mat- 
ters were still worse;" that "the South suf- 
fered serious grievances," which should 
be redressed "in peace." The day after 
this message the flag of the Union was 
fired upon from Fort Morris, and the 
insult was not revenged or noticed. Sen- 
ators in Congress telegraphed to their con- 
stituents to seize the national forts, and 
they were not arrested. The finances of 
the country were grievously embarrassed. 
Its little Army was not within reach; the 
part of it in Texas, with all its stores, was 
made over by its commander to rebels. 
One State after another voted in conven- 
tion to secede. A peace congress, so 
called, met at the request of Virginia to 
concert the terms of a capitulation which 
should secure permission for the continu- 
ance of the Union. Congress, in both 
33 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
branches, sought to devise conciliatory ex- 
pedients; the Territories of the country 
were organized in a manner not to conflict 
with any pretensions of the South, or any 
decision of the Supreme Court; and, 
nevertheless, the representatives of the re- 
bellion formed at Montgomery a provi- 
sional government, and pursued their 
relentless purpose with such success that 
the lieutenant-general feared the city of 
Washington might find itself "included 
in a foreign country," and proposed, 
among the options for the consideration 
of Lincoln, to bid the wayward States 
"depart in peace." The great Republic 
appeared to have its emblem in the vast 
unfinished Capitol, at that moment sur- 
rounded by masses of stone and prostrate 
columns never yet lifted into their places, 
seemingly the monument of high but de- 
lusive aspirations, the confused wreck of 
34 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
inchoate magnificence, sadder than any 
ruin of Egyptian Thebes or Athens. 

The fourth of March came. With in- 
stinctive wisdom the new President, speak- 
ing to the people on taking the oath 
of office, put aside every question that 
divided the country, and gained a right 
to universal support by planting himself 
on the single idea of union. The Union 
he declared to be unbroken and perpetual ; 
and he announced his determination to 
fulfill "the simple duty of taking care that 
the laws be faithfully executed in all the 
States." Seven days later the conven- 
tion of Confederate States unanimously 
adopted a constitution of their own; and 
the new government was authoritatively 
announced to be founded on the idea that 
the negro race is a slave race ; that slavery 
is its natural and normal condition. The 
issue was made up, whether the great Re- 
35 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
public was to maintain its providential 
place in the history of mankind, or a re- 
bellion founded on negro slavery gain a 
recognition of its principle throughout the 
civilized world. To the disaffected Lin- 
coln had said: "You can have no conflict 
without being yourselves the aggressors. 
To fire the passions of the Southern por- 
tion of the people, the Confederate gov- 
ernment chose to become aggressors, and, 
on the morning of the twelfth of April, 
began the bombardment of Fort Sumter, 
and compelled its evacuation. 

It is the glory of Lincoln that he had 
perfect faith in the perpetuity of the 
Union. Supported in advance by Doug- 
las, who spoke as with the voice of a mil- 
lion, he instantly called a meeting of 
Congress, and summoned the people to 
come up and repossess the forts, places, 
and property which had been seized from 
36 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
the Union. The men of the North were 
trained in schools ; industrious and frugal ; 
many of them delicately bred ; their minds 
teeming with ideas and fertile in plans of 
enterprise ; given to the culture of the arts ; 
eager in the pursuit of wealth, yet employ- 
ing wealth less for ostentation than for 
developing the resources of their country ; 
"^ seeking happiness in the calm of domestic 
life, and such lovers of peace that for gene- 
rations they had been reputed unwarlike. 
Now, at the cry of their country in its 
distress, they rose up with unappeasable 
patriotism; not hirelings— the purest and 
of the best blood in the land. Sons of a 
pious ancestry, with a clear perception of 
duty, unclouded faith, and fixed resolve to 
succeed, they thronged around the Presi- 
dent to support the wronged, the beautiful 
flag of the Nation. The halls of theolog- 
ical seminaries sent forth their young men, 

37 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

whose lips were touched with eloquence, 
whose hearts kindled with devotion, to 
serve in the ranks, and make their way to 
command only as they learned the art of 
war. Striplings in the colleges, as well 
the most gentle and the most studious, 
those of sweetest temper and loveliest 
character and brightest genius, passed 
from their classes to the camp. The lum- 
bermen from the forests, the mechanics 
from their benches, where they had been 
trained by the exercise of political rights 
to share the life and hope of the Republic, 
to feel their responsibility to their fore- 
fathers, their posterity, and mankind, 
went to the front resolved that their dig- 
nity as a constituent part of this Republic 
should not be impaired. Farmers and sons 
of farmers left the land but half plowed, 
the grain but half planted, and, taking up 
the musket, learned to face without fear 
38 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
the presence of peril and the troming of 
death in the shocks of war, while their 
hearts were still attracted to their herds 
and fields and all the tender affections of 
home. Whatever there was of truth and 
faith and public love in the common heart 
broke out with one expression. The 
mighty winds blew from every quarter to 
fan the flame of the sacred and unquench- 
able fire. 

For a time the war was thought to be 
confined to our own domestic affairs, but 
it was soon seen that it involved the des- 
tinies of mankind; its principles and 
causes shook the politics of Europe to the 
center, and from Lisbon to Pekin divided 
the governments of the world. 

There was a Kingdom whose people 
had in an eminent degree attained to free- 
dom of industry and the security of person 
and property. Its middle class rose to 
39 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
greatness. Out of that class sprung the 
noblest poets and philosophers, whose 
words built up the intellect of its people; 
skillful navigators, to find out for its 
merchants the many paths of the oceans; 
discoverers in natural science, whose in- 
ventions guided its industry to wealth, till 
it equaled any nation of the world in let- 
ters, and excelled all in trade and com- 
merce. But its Government was become a 
government of land, and not of men ; every 
blade of grass was represented, but only a 
small minority of the people. In the tran- 
sition from the feudal forms, the heads of 
the social organization freed themselves 
from the military services which were the 
conditions of their tenure, and, throwing 
the burden on the industrial classes, kept 
all the soil to themselves. Vast estates 
that had been managed by monasteries as 
endowments for religion and charity were 
40 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

impropriated to swell the wealth of cour» 
tiers and favorites; and the common^ 
where the poor man once had his right ot 
pasture were taken away, and, under forms 
of law, inclosed distributively within the 
domains of the adjacent landholders. Al- 
though no law forbade any inhabitant 
from purchasing land, the costliness of the 
transfer constituted a prohibition; so that 
it was the rule of the country that the plow 
should not be in the hands of its owner. 
The church was rested on a contradiction ; 
claiming to be an embodiment of absolute 
truth, it was a creature of the statute 
book. 

The progress of time increased the ter- 
rible contrast between wealth and poverty. 
In their years of strength the laboring 
people, cut off from all share in governing 
the state, derived a scant support from the 
severest toil and had no hope for old age 
41 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
but in public charity or death. A grasp- 
ing ambition had dotted the world with 
military posts, kept watch over our bor- 
ders on the Northeast, at the Bermudas, 
in the West Indies; appropriated the 
gates of the Pacific, of the Southern, and 
of the Indian Ocean; hovered on our 
Northwest at Vancouver, held the whole 
of the newest continent and the entrances 
to the old Mediterranean and Red Sea, 
and garrisoned forts all the way from 
Madras to China. That aristocracy had 
gazed with terror on the growth of a com- 
monwealth where freeholders existed by 
the million and religion was not in bond- 
age to the state; and now they could not 
repress their joy at its perils. They had 
not one word of sympathy for the kind- 
hearted poor man's son whom America 
had chosen for her chief; they jeered at 
his large hands and long feet and un- 
42 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

gainly stature; and the British secretary 
of state for foreign affairs made haste to 
send word through the palaces of Europe 
that the great Repubhc was in its agony; 
that the Repubhc was no more; that a 
headstone was all that remained due by 
the law of nations to "the late Union." 
But it is written : "Let the dead bury their 
dead ;" they may not bury the living. Let 
the dead bury their dead ; let a bill of re- 
form remove the worn-out government of 
a class, and infuse new life into the British 
constitution by confiding rightful power 
to the people. 

But while the vitality of America is in- 
destructible, the British Government hur- 
ried to do what never before had been 
done by Christian powers; what was in 
direct conflict with its own exposition 
of public law in the time of our struggle 
for independence. Though the insurgent 
48 



ABRAHAM J INCOLN 

States had not a ship in an open harbor, 
it invested them with all the rights of a 
belligerent, even on the ocean; and this, 
too, when the rebellion was not only 
directed against the gentlest and most 
beneficent Government on earth, without 
a shadow of justifiable cause, but when the 
rebellion was directed against human 
nature itself for the perpetual enslave- 
ment of a race. And the effect of this rec- 
ognition was that acts in themselves 
piratical found shelter in British courts 
of law. The resources of British capi- 
talists, their workshops, their armories, 
their private arsenals, their shipyards, 
were in league with the insurgents, and 
every British harbor in the wide world be- 
came a safe port for British ships, manned 
by British sailors, and armed with British 
guns, to prey on our peaceful commerce; 
even on our ships coming from British 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

ports, freighted with British products, or 
that had carried gifts of grain to the Eng- 
hsh poor. The prime minister, in the 
House of Commons, sustained by cheers, 
scoifed at the thought that their laws 
could be amended at our request so as to 
preserve real neutrality; and to remon- 
strances now owned to have been just 
by their secretary of state answered that 
they could not change their laws ad in- 
finitum. 

The people of America then wished, as 
they always have wished, as they still 
wish, friendly relations with England, this 
country has always yearned for good rela- 
tions with England. Thrice only in all 
its history has that yearning been fairly 
met: in the days of Hampden and Crom- 
well, again in the first ministry of the 
elder Pitt, and once again in the ministry 
of Shelburne. Not that there have not at 
45 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
all times been just men among the peers 
of Britain— like Halifax in the days of 
James the Second, or a Granville, an 
Argyll, or a Houghton in ours; and we 
can not be indifferent to a country that 
produces statesmen like Cobden and 
Bright; but the best bower anchor of 
peace was the working class of England, 
who suffered most from our civil war, but 
who, while they broke their diminished 
bread in sorrow, always encouraged us to 
persevere. 

The act of recognizing the rebel bellig- 
erents was concerted with France— 
France, so beloved in America, on which 
she had conferred the greatest benefits 
that one people ever conferred on another ; 
France, which stands foremost on the con- 
tinent of Europe for the solidity of her 
culture, as well as for the bravery and gen- 
erous impulses of her sons ; France, which 
46 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
for centuries had been moving steadily in 
her own way toward intellectual and 
pohtical freedom. The policy regarding 
further colonization of America by Euro- 
pean powers, known commonly as the doc- 
trine of Monroe, had its origin in France ; 
and, if it takes any man's name, should 
bear the name of Turgot. It was adopted 
by Louis the Sixteenth, in the cabinet of 
which Vergennes was the most important 
member. It is emphatically the policy of 
France, to which, with transient devia- 
tions, the Bourbons, the first Napoleon, 
the house of Orleans have adhered. 

Lincoln was perpetually harassed by 
rumors that the Emperor Napoleon the 
Third desired formally to recognize the 
States in rebelHon as an independent 
Power, and that England held him back 
by her reluctance, or France by her tradi- 
tions of freedom, or he himself by his own 
47 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

better judgment and clear perception of 
events. But the Republic of JNIexico, on 
our borders, was, like ourselves, distracted 
by a rebellion, and from a similar cause. 
The monarchy of England had fastened 
upon us slavery which did not disappear 
with independence; in like manner, the 
ecclesiastical policy established by the 
Spanish Council of the Indies, in the days 
of Charles the Fifth and Philip the 
Second, retained its vigor in the Mexican 
Republic. The fifty years of civil war 
under which she had languished was due 
to the bigoted system which was the 
legacy of monarchy, just as here the inher- 
itance of slavery kept alive political strife, 
and culminated in civil war. As with us 
there could be no quiet but through the 
end of slavery, so in Mexico there could 
be no prosperity until the crushing tyr- 
anny of intolerance should cease. The 
48 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
party of slavery in the United States sent 
their emissaries to Euro-pe. to solicit aid ; 
and so did the party' of the chuiTli in 
Mexico, as organized by the old Spanish 
Council of the Indies, but with a different 
result. Just as the Republican party had 
made an end of the rebellion, and was 
establishing the best government ever 
known in that region, and giving promise 
to the Nation of order, peace, and pros- 
perity, word was brought us, in the 
moment of our deepest affliction, that the 
French Emperor, moved by a desire to 
erect in North America a buttress for im- 
perialism, would transform the Republic 
of Mexico into a secundo-geniture for the 
house of Hapsburg. Anierica might com- 
plain; she could not then interpose, and 
delay seemed justifiable. It was seen that 
Mexico could not, with all its wealth of 
land, compete in cereal products with our 
49 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

Northwest, nor in tropical products with 
Cuba; nor could it, under a disputed 
dynast}^ attract capital, or create public 
works, or develop mines, or borrow 
money; so that the imperial system of 
IMexico, which was forced at once to recog- 
nize the wisdom of the policy of the Re- 
public by adopting it, could prove only 
an unremunerating drain on the French 
treasury for the support of an Austrian 
adventurer. 

Meantime a new series of momentous 
questions grows up, and forces itself on 
the consideration of the thoughtful. Re- 
publicanism has learned how to introduce 
into its constitution every element of order, 
as well as every element of freedom; but 
thus far the continuity of its government 
has seemed to depend on the continuity 
of elections. It is now to be considered 
how perpetuity is to be secured against 
50 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
foreign occupation. The successor of 
Charles the First of England dated his 
reign from the death of his father; the 
Bourbons, coming back after a long series 
of revolutions, claimed that the Louis who 
became King was the eighteenth of that 
name. The Emperor of the French, dis- 
daining a title from election alone, called 
himself Napoleon the Third. Shall a re- 
public have less power of continuance when 
invading armies prevent a peaceful resort 
to the ballot box? What force shall it 
attach to intervening legislation? What 
validity to debts contracted for its over- 
throw? These momentous questions 
are, by the invasion of Mexico, thrown 
up for solution. A free state once truly 
constituted should be as undying as its 
people ; the Republic of Mexico must rise 
again. 

S It was the condition of affairs in Mexico 
51 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
that involved the Pope of Rome m our 
difficulties so far that he alone among 
sovereigns recognized the chief of the Con- 
federate States as a President, and his 
supporters as a people; and in letters to 
two great prelates of the Catholic Church 
in the United States gave counsels for 
peace at a time when peace meant the vic- 
tory of secession. Yet events move as they 
are ordered. The blessing of the Pope at 
Rome on the head of Duke Maximilian 
could not revive in the nineteenth century 
the ecclesiastical policy of the sixteenth; 
and the result is only a new proof that 
there can be no' prosperity in the state 
without religious freedom. • 

When it came home to the consciousness 
of the Americans that the war which they 
were waging was a war for the liberty of 
all the nations of the world, for freedom 
itself, they thanked God for giving them 
52 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

strength to endure the severity of the trial 
to which He put their sincerity, and 
nerved themselves for their duty with an 
inexorable will. The President was led 
along by the greatness of their self-sacri- 
ficing example; and as a child, in a dark 
night on a rugged way, catches hold of the 
hand of its father for guidance and sup- 
port, he clung fast to the hand of the 
people, and moved calmly through the 
gloom. While the statesmanship of 
Europe was mocking at the hopeless 
vanity of their efforts, they put forth such 
miracles of energy as the history of the 
world had never known. The contribu- 
tions to the popular loans amounted in 
four years to twenty-seven and a half 
hundred millions of dollars; the revenue 
of the country from taxation was increased 
sevenfold. The Navy of the United 
States, drawing into the public service the 
53 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

willing militia of the seas, doubled its ton- 
nage in eight months, and established an 
actual blockade from Cape Hatteras to 
the Rio Grande; in the course of the war 
it was increased fivefold in men and in 
tonnage, vv^hile the inventive genius of 
the country devised more effective kinds 
of ordnance and new forms of naval archi- 
tecture in wood and iron. There went 
into the field for various terms of enlist- 
ment about two million men; and in 
March, 1865, the men in the Army ex- 
ceeded a million; that is to say, nine of 
every twenty able-bodied men in the free 
Territories and States took some part in 
the war; and at one time every fifth of 
their able-bodied men was in service. In 
one single month one hundred and sixty- 
five thousand men were recruited into ser- 
vice. Once, within four weeks, Ohio 
organized and placed in the field forty- 
54 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

two regiments of infantry — nearly thirty- 
six thousand men; and Ohio was like 
other States in the East and in the West. 
The well-mounted cavalry numbered 
eighty-four thousand ; of horses and mules 
there were bought, from first to last, two- 
thirds of a million. In the movements of 
troops science came in aid of patriotism, 
so that, to choose a single instance out of 
many, an army twenty-three thousand 
strong, with its artillery, trains, baggage, 
and animals, were moved by rail from the 
Potomac to the Tennessee, twelve hundred 
miles, in seven days. On the long marches 
wonders of military construction bridged 
the rivers, and wherever an army halted 
ample supplies awaited them at their ever 
changing base. The vile thought that life 
is the greatest of blessings did not rise up. 
In six hundred and twenty-five battles 
and severe skirmishes blood flowed like 

55 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
water. It streamed over the grassy- 
plains; it stained the rocks; the under- 
growth of the forests was red with it ; and 
the armies marched on with majestic cour- 
age from one conflict to another, knowing 
that they were fighting for God and lib- 
erty. The organization of the medical de- 
partment met its infinitely multiplied 
duties with exactness and dispatch. At 
the news of a battle the best surgeons of 
our cities hastened to the field to offer the 
untiring aid of the greatest experience and 
skill. The gentlest and most refined of 
women left homes of luxury and ease to 
build hospital tents near the armies and 
serve as nurses to the sick and dying. Be- 
sides the large supply of religious teachers 
by the public, the congregations spared 
to their brothers in the field the ablest min- 
isters. The Christian Commission, which 
expended more than six and a quarter 
5Q 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

millions, sent nearly five thousand clergy- 
men, chosen out of the best, to keep un- 
soiled the religious character of the men, 
and made gifts of clothes and food and 
medicine. The organization of private 
charity assumed unheard-of dimensions. 
The Sanitary Commission, which had 
seven thousand societies, distributed, 
under the direction of an unpaid board, 
spontaneous contributions to the amount 
of fifteen millions in supplies or money— 
a million and a half in money from Cali- 
fornia alone— and dotted the scene of war, 
from Paducah to Port Royal, from Belle 
Plain, Virginia, to Brownsville, Texas, 
with homes and lodges. 

The country had for its allies the river 
Mississippi, which would not be divided, 
and the range of mountains which carried 
the stronghold of the free through western 
Virginia and Kentucky and Tennessee to 
57 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

the highlands of Alabama. But it in- 
voked the still higher power of immortal 
justice. In ancient Greece, where servi- 
tude was the universal custom, it was held 
that if a child were to strike its parent, the 
slave should defend the parent, and by 
that act recover his freedom. After vain 
resistance Lincoln, who had tried to solve 
the question by gradual emancipation, by 
colonization, and by compensation, at last 
saw that slavery must be abolished or the 
Republic must die ; and on the first day of 
January, 1863, he wrote liberty on the 
banners of the armies. When this procla- 
mation, which struck the fetters from 
three millions of slaves, reached Europe, 
Lord Russell, a countryman of Milton 
and Wilberf orce, eagerly put himself for- 
ward to speak of it in the name of man- 
kind, saying: "It is of a very strange 
nature ;" "a measure of war of a very ques- 
58 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
tionable kind;" an act "of vengeance on 
the slave owner," that does no more than 
"profess to emancipate slaves where the 
United States authorities can not make 
emancipation a reality." Now, there was 
no part of the country embraced* in the 
proclamation where the United States 
could not and did not make emancipation 
a reality. Those who saw Lincoln most 
frequently had never before heard him 
speak with bitterness of any human being ; 
but he did not conceal how keenly he felt 
that he had been wronged by Lord Rus- 
sell. And he wrote in reply to other 
cavils: "The emancipation policy and the 
use of colored troops were the greatest 
blows yet dealt to the rebellion; the job 
was a great national one, and let none be 
slighted who bore an honorable part in it. 
I hope peace will come soon and come to 
stay; then will there be some black men 

59 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
who can remember that they have helped 
mankind to this great consummation." 

The proclamation accomplished its end, 
for during the war our armies came into 
military possession of every State in re- 
bellion. Then, too, was called forth the 
new power that comes from the simulta- 
neous diffusion of thought and feeling 
among the nations of mankind. The mys- 
terious sympathy of the millions through- 
out the world was given spontaneously. 
The best writers of Europe waked the 
conscience of the thoughtful till the intelli- 
gent moral sentiment of the Old World 
was drawn to the side of the unlettered 
statesman of the West. Russia, whose 
Emperor had just accomplished one of 
the grandest acts in the course of time by 
raising twenty millions of bondmen into 
freeholders, and thus assuring the growth 
and culture of a Russian people, remained 
60 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
our unwavering friend. From the oldest 
abode of civilization, which gave the first 
example of an imperial government with 
equality among the people, Prince Kung, 
the secretary of state for foreign affairs, 
remembered the saying of Confucius, that 
we should not do to others what we would 
not that others should do to us, and in the 
name of his Emperor read a lesson to 
European diplomats by closing the ports 
of China against the war ships and pri- 
vateers of "the seditious." 

The war continued, with all the peoples 
of the world for anxious spectators. Its 
cares weighed heavily on Lincoln, and his 
face was plowed with the furrows of 
thought and sadness. With malice toward 
none, free from the spirit of revenge, vic- 
tory made him importunate for peace ; and 
his enemies never doubted his word or de- 
spaired of his abounding clemency. He 
61 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
longed to utter pardon as the word for all, 
but not unless the freedom of the negro 
should be assured. The grand battles of 
Fort Donelson, Chattanooga, Malvern 
Hill, Antietam, Gettysburg, the Wilder- 
ness of Virginia, Winchester, Nashville, 
the capture of New Orleans, Vicksburg, 
Mobile, Fort Fisher, the march from At- 
lanta, and the capture of Savannah and 
Charleston, all foretold the issue. Still 
more, the self-regeneration of JNIissouri, 
the heart of the continent; of Maryland, 
whose sons never heard the midnight bells 
chime so sweetly as when they rang out to 
earth and heaven that by the voice of her 
own people she took her place among the 
free; of Tennessee, which passed through 
fire and blood, through sorrows and the 
shadow of death, to work out her own de- 
liverance, and by the faithfulness of her 
own sons to renew her youth like the eagle 
62 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
— proved that victory was deserved and 
would be worth all that it cost. If words 
of mercy, uttered as they were by Lincoln 
on the waters of Virginia, were defiantly 
repelled, the armies of the country, mov- 
ing with one will, went as the arrow to its 
mark, and without a feeling of revenge 
struck a deathblow at rebellion. 

Where in the history of nations had a 
Chief Magistrate possessed more sources 
of consolation and joy than Lincoln? His 
countrymen had shown their love by 
choosing him to a second term of service. 
The raging war that had divided the 
country had lulled ; and private grief was 
hushed by the grandeur of the result. 
The Nation had its new birth of freedom, 
soon to be secured forever by an amendment 
of the Constitution. His persistent gentle- 
ness had conquered for him a kindlier feel- 
ing on the part of the South. His scoffers 
63 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
among the grandees of Europe began to 
do him honor. The laboring classes every- 
where saw in his advancement their own. 
All peoples sent him their benedictions. 
And at this moment of the height of his 
fame, to which his humility and modesty 
added charms, he fell by the hand of the 
assassin; and the only triumph awarded 
him was the march to the grave. 

This is no time to say that human glory 
is but dust and ashes, that we mortals 
are no more than shadows in pursuit of 
shadows. How mean a thing were man, 
if there were not that within him which 
is higher than himself; if he could not 
master the illusions of sense, and discern 
the connections of events by a superior 
light which comes from God. He so shares 
the divine impulses that he has power to 
subject interested passions to love of coun- 
try, and personal ambition to the ennoble- 
64 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
ment of his kind. Not in vain has Lincohi 
lived, for he has helped to make this Re- 
public an example of justice, with no caste 
but the caste of humanity. The heroes 
who led our armies and ships in battle and 
fell in the service — Lyon, McPherson, 
Reynolds, Sedgwick, Wads worth, Foote, 
Ward, with their compeers— did not die 
in vain ; they and the myriads of nameless 
martyrs, and he, the chief martyr, gave 
up their lives willingly "that government 
of the people, by the people, and for the 
people shall not perish from the earth." 

The assassination of Lincoln, who was 
so free from malice, has by some myste- 
rious influence struck the country with 
solemn awe, and hushed, instead of excit- 
ing, the passion for revenge. It seems as 
if the just had died for the unjust. When 
I think of the friends I have lost in this 
war— and many have, like myself, lost 
65 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

some of those whom they most loved— 
there is no consolation to be derived from 
victims on the scaffold, or from anything 
but the established union of the regener- 
ated Nation. 

In his character Lincoln was through 
and through an American. He is the first 
native of the region west of the Alle- 
ghanies to attain to the highest station; 
and how happy it is that the man who was 
brought forward as the natural outgrowth 
and first fruits of that region should have 
been of unblemished purity in private life, 
a good son, a kind husband, a most affec- 
tionate father, and, as a man, so gentle to 
all. As to integrity, Douglas, his rival, 
said of him: "Lincoln is the honestest man 
I ever knew." 

The habits of his mind were those of 
meditation and inward thought, rather 
than of action. He delighted to express 
6Q 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
his opinions by an apothegm, illustrate 
them by a parable, or drive them home by 
a story. He was skillful in analysis; dis- 
cerned with precision the central idea on 
which a question turned, and knew how to 
disengage it and present it by itself in a 
few homely, strong old English words 
that would be intelligible to all. He ex- 
celled in logical statement, more than in 
executive ability. He reasoned clearly, his 
reflective judgment was good, and his 
purposes were fixed ; but, like the Hamlet 
of his only poet, his will was tardy in 
action; and for this reason, and not from 
humility or tenderness of feeling, he 
sometimes deplored that the duty which 
devolved on him had not fallen to the lot 
of another. 

Lincoln gained a name by discussing 
questions which, of all others, most easily 
lead to fanaticism; but he was never car- 

67 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
ried away by enthusiastic zeal, never in- 
dulged in extravagant language, never 
hurried to support extreme measures, 
never allowed himself to be controlled by 
sudden impulses. During the progress of 
the election at which he was chosen Presi- 
dent he expressed no opinion that went 
beyond the Jefferson proviso of 1784. 
Like Jefferson and Lafayette, he had 
faith in the intuitions of the people, and 
read those intuitions with rare sagacity. 
He knew how to bide time, and was less 
apt to run ahead of public thought than to 
lag behind. He never thought to elec- 
trify the community by taking an ad- 
vanced position with a banner of opinion, 
but rather studied to move forward com- 
pactly, exposing no detachment in front 
or rear ; so that the course of his Adminis- 
tration might have been explained as the 
calculating policy of a shrewd and watch- 
68 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

ful politician, had there not been seen 
behind it a fixedness of principle which 
from the first determined his purpose and 
grew more intense with every year, con- 
suming his life by its energy. Yet his 
sensibilities were not acute; he had no 
vividness of imagination to picture to his 
mind the horrors of the battlefield or the 
sufferings in hospitals; his conscience was 
more tender than his feelings. 

Lincoln was one of the most unassum- 
ing of men. In time of success he gave 
credit for it to those whom, he employed, 
to the people, and to the providence of 
God. He did not know what ostentation 
is; when he became President he was 
rather saddened than elated, and his con- 
duct and manners showed more than ever 
his belief that all men are born equal. He 
was no respecter of persons, and neither 
rank nor reputation nor services over- 
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ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
awed him. In judging of character he 
failed in discrimination, and his appoint- 
ments were sometimes bad ; but he readily 
deferred to public opinion, and in appoint- 
ing the head of the armies he followed the 
manifest preference of Congress. 

A good President will secure unity to 
his Administration by his own supervision 
of the various Departments. Lincoln, 
who accepted advice readily, was never 
governed by any member of his Cabinet, 
and could not be moved from a purpose 
deliberately formed; but his supervision 
of affairs was unsteady and incomplete, 
and sometimes, by a sudden interference 
transcending the usual forms, he rather 
confused than advanced the public busi- 
ness. If he ever failed in the scrupulous 
regard due to the relative rights of Con- 
gress, it was so evidently without design 
that no conflict could ensue, or evil prece- 
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ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
dent be established. Truth he would re- 
ceive from anyone; but when impressed 
by others he did not use their opinions till 
by reflection he had made them thoroughly 
his own. 

It was the nature of Lincoln to forgive. 
When hostilities ceased he, who had al- 
ways sent forth the flag with every one of 
its stars in the field, was eager to receive 
back his returning countrymen, and medi- 
tated "some new announcement to the 
South." The amendment of the Consti- 
tution abolishing slavery had his most 
earnest and unwearied support. During 
the rage of war we get a glimpse into his 
soul from his privately suggesting to 
Louisiana that "in defining the franchise 
some of the colored people might be let 
in," saying: "They would probably help, 
in some trying time to come, to keep the 
jewel of liberty in the family of freedom." 

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ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
In 1857 he avowed himself "not in favor 
of" what he improperly called "negro citi- 
zenship;" for the Constitution discrimi- 
nates between citizens and electors. Three 
days before his death he declared his pref- 
erence that "the elective franchise were 
now conferred on the very intelligent of 
the colored men and on those of them who 
served our cause as soldiers;" but he 
wished it done by the States themselves, 
and he never harbored the thought of ex- 
acting it from a new government as a 
condition of its recognition. 

The last day of his life beamed with 
sunshine, as he sent by the Speaker of the 
House of Representatives his friendly 
greetings to the men of the Rocky Moun- 
tains and the Pacific slope; as he contem- 
plated the return of hundreds of thousands 
of soldiers to fruitful industry ; as he wel- 
comed in advance hundreds of thousands 
72 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

of emigrants from Europe; as his eye 
kindled with enthusiasm at the coming 
wealth of the Nation. And so, with these 
thoughts for his country, he was removed 
from the toils and temptations of this life 
and was at peace. 

Hardly had Lincoln been consigned to 
the grave when the prime minister of 
England died, full of years and honors. 
Palmerston traced his lineage to the time 
of the Conqueror ; Lincoln went back only 
to his grandfather. Palmerston received 
his education from the best scholars of 
Harrow, Edinburgh, and Cambridge; 
Lincoln's early teachers were the silent 
forest, the prairie, the river, and the stars. 
Palmerston was in public life for sixty 
years; Lincoln for but a tenth of that 
time. Palmerston was a skillful guide of 
an established aristocracy; Lincoln a 
leader or rather a companion of the peo- 
73 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
pie. Palmerston was exclusively an 
Englishman, and made his boast in the 
House of Commons that the interest of 
England was his shibboleth; Lincoln 
thought always of mankind as well as his 
own country, and served human nature 
itself. Palmerston, from his narrowness 
as an Englishman, did not endear his 
country to any one court or to any one 
nation, but rather caused general uneasi- 
ness and dislike; Lincoln left America 
more beloved than ever by all the peoples 
of Europe. Palmerston was self-pos- 
sessed and adroit in reconciling the 
conflicting factions of the aristocracy ; Lin- 
coln, frank and ingenuous, knew how to 
poise himself on the ever moving opinions 
of the masses. Palmerston was capable 
of insolence toward the weak, quick to the 
sense of honor, not heedful of right ; Lin- 
coln rejected counsel given only as a mat- 
74 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
ter of policy, and was not capable of being 
willfully unjust. Palmerston, essentially 
superficial, delighted in banter and knew 
how to divert grave opposition by playful 
levity; Lincoln was a man of infinite jest 
on his lips, with saddest earnestness at his 
heart. Palmerston was a fair representa- 
tive of the aristocratic liberality of the 
day, choosing for his tribunal, not the con- 
science of humanity, but the House of 
Commons ; Lincoln took to heart the eter- 
nal truths of liberty, obeyed them as the 
commands of Providence, and accepted 
the human race as the judge of his fidelity. 
Palmerston did nothing that will endure; 
Lincoln finished a work which all time can 
not overthrow. Palmerston is a shining- 
example of the ablest of a cultivated aris- 
tocracy; Lincoln is the genuine fruit of 
institutions where the laboring man shares 
and assists to form the great ideas and 
75 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
designs of his country. Palmerston was 
buried in Westminster Abbey by the order 
of his Queen, and was attended by the 
British aristocracy to his grave, which 
after a few years will hardly be noticed 
by the side of the graves of Fox and 
Chatham; Lincoln was followed by the 
sorrow of his country across the continent 
to his resting place in the heart of the 
Mississippi Valley, to be remembered 
through all time by his countrymen and 
by all the peoples of the world. 



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